Authors: Aizhong Lin; Ian Wilkinson; James Wiley
Economic institutions involved in creating and delivering products and services to end-users operate within networks of relations that “organize” the flows of activities. Historically, an implicit assumption underlying research into these networks is that the patterns of relations are controlled by the organizations involved — the so-called top down view. More recently, we have come to recognize that the relations among organizations may be (possibly unintentional) consequences of the ongoing process of interaction. That is, network structure can emerge in a bottom up self-organizing way. The research we describe aims to develop a methodology for studying the· processes by which institutional and network structures evolve, · the factors driving these processes, · the impact of environmental conditions on outcomes, and · the ways in which the evolution of better performing institutional and network structures may be encouraged. The work uses the NK Models developed by Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute (Kauffman 1992, 1995) to develop computer models that are capable of mimicking the evolutionary processes of industrial networks. This paper briefly describes the logic of the underlying the models being developed and presents the results of the simulation of a simple network situation using an NK Boolean Model.
Journal: Interjournal of Complex Systems (Article #409 – )
Web Address: www.interjournal.org
Publish Year: 2001
Conference: